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Sheesh, I feel like the man without a country - in this case without a blog home.

So, if you've been loyal to this blog the past five years, you know that two years ago we moved it from Blogger to Typepad, to a platform hosted by the Miami Herald.

Well, the Miami Herald is updating and changing its blogging setup, and that means cleaning house. So Burnettiquette, along with a few other blogs that haven't been regularly updated for a long time, is on the chopping block. What can I tell you? The past six months have been full, so full I haven't had much time to blog very often (even though I've said repeatedly, "I'll start blogging again, tomorrow!").

No worries, I'm still reporting and writing columns for the Miami Herald. In fact here is my latest column. WaveManCali, I don't want to see any sniping about government interference in our daily lives. You'll see in the middle of the column I actually take your stance on that one!

And, I'll still be blogging. While a new, independent home is being built for the Burnettiquette Blog, starting some time this weekend, or Monday, I'll be temporarily posting at Burnettiquette's old home - http://Burnettiquette.blogspot.com.

The Washington Post's Gene Weingarten'is old enough to be my dad...I think. And I mean that as a compliment. But in this column he nails it and expresses everything I feel about journalism since I got into the biz a scant 14 years ago.

What's crackin', friends and frienemies? Unless you live under a rock or in parts of Iraq, even if you're not a pro sports fan, you probably know that over the past week or so there's been big buzz in the news over where now-former Cleveland Cavaliers basketball star LeBron James would land in this season of free agency. He landed in Miami...last night.

Awesome news for the Miami Heat and the team's fans. Great news for sports journalists - especially those based in South Florida, given the amazingly talented trio of James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosch, now leading the Heat. Not so great news for folks in Cleveland.

But amidst all the hype surrounding this story, there are a few highlights - good and bad - that have been missed.

No worries. JB has 'em for you - five considerations for jocks, fans, and media on Lebron James's move to Miami:

To the sports journalists and angry Cleveland fans who say James can no longer be considered a superstar, because he's pairing up with another superstar, where were you for all the years the Los Angeles Lakers stacked the deck? Does anyone remember Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant playing together? Granted, Bryant was a rookie when they started. But they still played together. What about Magic Johnson and James Worthy? Seriously, you would never put down the superstar quarterback of your favorite NFL team for wanting to play with a superstar wide receiver. Oh, the horror! Two big stars on one team! It's the end of pro sports as we know it! Moving right along.

At Cleveland.com, online home of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, there are hundreds of comments by former James fans suggested that their lives and their region have been ruined by his departure. These are clearly people who have not faced layoff at work or cancer or an earthquake or a tornado, because LeBron James leaving town should not ruin the lives of people who were not close to him. Folks in Cleveland and disjointed sports journalists, James wasn't your friend. If you weren't at his kids' christenings or at his house for a barbecue now and then, he wasn't your friend. He wasn't in an intimate relationship with you. Friends and lovers are people who owe you something, people who know you. James's relationship with you was an extension of his business relationship with the Cleveland Cavaliers. Deep Breaths. It'll be alright.

To the sports journalists who have sided with Dan Gilbert, Cavaliers' owner, in calling James a coward and a traitor and disloyal for leaving the team, how many of you, who are not from New York or LA, or Chicago or DC, or Miami (had to slip that in there!), still live and work in your home towns? If loyalty to where you're from means that much, why aren't you broadcasting and printing from the weak-signaled TV and radio stations and three-page newspapers in your tiny home towns? Why'd you all clammer early in your careers to get to Chicago or New York or LA...or Miami? 'Cause you wanted to do your thing in settings that gave you a better chance at media stardom, bigger money, or both.

I've had a theory for a long time that modern pro sports is just a few steps away from modern slavery. Cavaliers' owner Dan Gilbert's reaction to James sort of sealed it for me. Don't get all squirelly and uncomfortable. But think about it. Rich men bid in informal auctions on the services of strapping young men. That sums up the free agency element to pro sports. My point is the logical mind gets that sports team owners offer jocks sums of money to play for a number of years. Jocks play. Owners pay. When the agreement ends they renew it on different terms or they part ways. The blood-boiling reactions from Gilbert and many Cavs fans though would have you believe that James's name was actually Toby, that he was their property and that he had no right to leave town, that he, not his uniforms and paraphernalia, was property of the team and the town. The only way Lebron James still "owed" Cleveland anything would be if he hadn't fulfilled his contract. Gilbert paid, James played. Done deal. Yeah, James promised a championship and never brought it. So what. Shaq promised a second championship to Miami and got traded before that happened. I don't see any bounty hunters after him for leaving town.

LeBron isn't completely blameless in the swirl of anger and bad feelings surrounding his departure from Cleveland. Although I have to say the level of rage aimed at him last night makes it seem like a very wise and safe decision in retrospect to make his announcement outside the state of Ohio! Seriously, though, he should fire whichever public relations pro advised him to announce his decision in a one-hour televised special last night. It smacked of mega-ego - not the "standard" kind that we come to assume all elite athletes have, but rather the arrogant, indifferent kind that lazy, privileged types often display. That announcement show was more dragged out than elimination night on American Idol. James should've held a standard, traditional news conference, announced in five minutes or less his decision, his "sadness" over leaving home, and how much he was looking forward to taking his career in a new direction in Miami. Then he should've opened the floor for questions for 20 minutes or so, taken the inevitable beating that good journalists would've laid on him, and called it a night.

I know you guys are here to ask questions about my relationship with my wife, the sex I had with several women who aren't my wife, the freaky text messages and emails I sent to some of them, and then, maybe, about my golf game. But I'm not going to satisfy your curiosity. Before we open the floor to questions, let's get a couple things straight for the last time, because after I clear the air here, unless I backslide and resume my recent-past cheating ways, then I will take no more questions - ever! - about my sex life.

So here's the deal. I have apologized repeatedly to my wife for cheating on her with other women. My apologies are clearly just words. But she'll need to observe my actions over time to trust me again. I have apologized to my fans for displaying bad character and tarnishing the clean, disciplined image they had grown to expect of me. I don't think I owe you guys any apologies, because most of you were hired or assigned to cover my life in the context of golf, not keep score of who I cheated with...unless you know something I don't about how such a tally relates to golf. To a lesser extent, I have offered a general apology to the women with whom I cheated. And that's all I intend to offer them. Yes, I treated them as sexual objects and in that context I used them. But I did not kidnap any of them. I did not hold them against their will. They are all grown women. They all knew that I was married when they agreed to have sex with me. If anything, they need to offer heartfelt apologies to my wife for scheming with me to cheat, and thus partnering with me to jointly disrespect Elin. I'm not afraid of anything they may leak to the press. Nothing they say or show you guys can be more humiliating than the messages they've already released.

By the way, don't ask me about other so-called celebrities' sex lives either. Their problems are theirs, whether they swing a club, shoot a ball, or build motorcycles for a living. If they're sucker enough to keep talking to you about the stuff that doesn't relate to their work, then more power to them. But unless - God forbid - I cheat again, then I'm done talking about it.

And that, guys, is all I have to say about my sex life...ever...unless, like I said earlier, I backslide. And if that happens, I deserve all the tabloid-like trashy coverage I get.

BY JAMES H. BURNETT III

PORT-AU-PRINCE -- On a recent Friday morning, Marie Kettie Geolnarol-Archer, between appointments in the Champ de Mars neighborhood, stopped people in the street and on the sidewalk, gently squeezing shoulders and patting backs until they looked her in the eye.

``You are not crazy,'' she told them. ``Everything will be OK.''

Geolnarol-Archer is a psychologist, and while her sidewalk ``treatments'' may have been casual and unorthodox, the most unusual thing about them was the responses....

We start today with GQ Magazine not getting the memo that there is actual news happening...stuff that people - even its high-end readership - care about, and instead dedicating words and pictures to Rielle Hunter, former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards' mistress. Hunter uses her space to defend her affair with Edwards, insist she didn't pursue him, blame his terminally ill soon-to-be-ex-wife for his hankering for strange, and predict that they (Hunter and Edwards) would be in love with one another forever. And she took a really weird picture for someone begging to be taken serioulsy - posing pantsless with stuffed animals and cartoon characters, including a stuffed Dora the Explorer, and Barney the Dinosaur. Pants on the ground, pants on the ground, lookin' like a fool with your pants on the ground! Ahem, as a public service, I'm not including the link to the GQ article. I read it for you, so you could look up more important things on more important sites like MiamiHerald.com...You're welcome!

A city worker in Detroit just won a $100,000 settlement against the city, because the worker successfully argued that a co-worker's too-strong perfume made it difficult to work, focus, breathe, etc. I hate frivolous lawsuits, but I'm not so sure this one's frivolous. I have fairly heavy allergies and asthma. So I feel this woman's pain. And if she asked her supervisors to help by moving her or the perfume wearer or by asking folks to tone down their scents, and they didn't help, then bully for her. Glad she won. I've had a couple of co-workers who smelled like goat farms. It was like working with Pigpen. Made my eyes water. And damned if I couldn't focus either. I was writing things that looked like hieroglyphics I was so dazed. Kidding about that last part. But seriously, I think this suit was just fine. The city's putting up placards now, asking other workers to not wear strong, smelly stuff, so as to avoid further suits.

Glenn Beck is wrong about social justice having no place in church teachings. Last week the Fox News Channel commentator urged fans to leave their churches if their ministers preached "social justice," because such preaching/teaching pollutes the Gospel. The problem with Beck's argument though, is he interchanges kindness with politics. Every major religion and every Christian denomination - including Beck's Mormon religion - call on government to be fair to people. If you're athiest or agnostic or whatever, none of this means squat to you, 'cause good deeds are good deeds and bad are bad, and so on. But if you call yourself Christian, then you know - or should know - that your bible teaches that Christ fed the poor and encouraged his disciples to do so. He washed other people's feet as a demonstration of humility. He healed the blind and sick (even those without adequate health insurance). His actions were kind, and exhorted his followers to do practice similar acts. Same goes for pretty much every organized religion, and its deities, and prophets, and leaders. Beck'sproblem seems to be one of churches whose leaders try to influence government to set formal policy on social justice issues like poverty. Either way, he's wrong. A religious group can teach its parishioners to do all those kind things in the name of social justice and it can call on government or big business or both to be fair to Average Joe, without making the argument a partisan one and without arguing that individual rights be diminished.

There's been a lot of outrage over the past few days, since Howard Stern ranted on-air that Gabourey Sidibe, who played the title character in the film Precious, was so fat she'd never work again in Hollywood and that she should treasure her Oscar nomination now 'cause it was the only time she'd get one. In fact, Stern was downright mean in his descriptions of Sidibe. But for all the distasteful nature of his style (and that of sidekick, Robin Whatshername), Stern alluded to a very, very valid point: Obesity is a major health problem in the United States. Obesity among African Americans is at scary levels. Obesity in general costs the already overburdened medical care system billions per year. If the source of our obesity problem was a mystery, this would be a different discussion. But much of it can be attributed to people eating crap and leading sedentary lifestyles. So, Stern argued that people who tell Sidibe to stay just the way she is and tell her that she can get plenty of roles in Hollywood just the way she is, are helping keep her at a dangeroulsy unhealthy weight/size by inadvertently telling her to stay obese. I think his argument warrants consideration. Again, there's no excuse for Stern's mean descriptions of Sidibe. But what do you expect - for him to be diplomatic? And his claim that she'll never work in Hollywood again have already been proven false. She co-stars with Zoe Kravitz in Yelling to the Sky, set for release later this year. The Oscar thing? Silly. How do you predict that someone will "never" be nominated again? Who would've thought Mickey Rourke would make a comeback? But I do agree with Stern's argument about Hollywood folks doing Sidibe a disservice by telling her she's fine just as she is, physically. If they mean to tell her she's an all-around beautiful person for having a radiant smile and confidence and smarts and an awesome personality, etc., they should. But they shouldn't encourage anyone to remain obese because it seems like the nice thing to say.

So that's all for me...for this morning, anyway. I've got an article to finish.

TV media personalities and tabloid types have done you a disservice on the Tiger Woods "story," by reporting a dozen-plus mistresses as though that number has been confirmed as fact, when, in reality, two or three mistresses have been confirmed. The rest were "confirmed" only by the credibility challenged women who've come out of the woodwork to claim affairs with Woods. Keep in mind, these are the same media figures who now refer to Woods as a "black" athlete, although they praised him as a multicultural "CaublAsian" when they thought he was husband/father/athlete of the century. So he's solely on Team Black Folks now? Great.

The ignorant and sometimes dangerous antics of professional athletes across the various sports disciplines could be nearly eliminated if the National Basketball Association would pull a Pete Rose on the Washington Wizards' Gilbert Arenas & Javaris Crittenton and ban them from the league for life for bringing guns into the Wizards' arena. How stupid do you have to be to bring guns to work when your employer was forced to change its name from "Bullets" to "Wizards" to avoid the bad PR? Sure Arenas' guns were unloaded. But reportedly Crittenton's wasn't. Besides, Arenas is a numbnut. Who knows whether he just forgot to bring the ammo? The threat of no pay or Average Joe pay will cure these guys of what ails them.

We are not in a "post-racial" America. That is a damnable myth perpetuated by political consultants from both sides of the aisle who are planning their next election heists. That very name - "post racial" - suggests that a majority of us have become so enlightened as to not notice or give serious consideration to other people's ethnic physical characteristics. Baloney. I'm the most "post-racial" guy I know. Seriously, Bill Cosby should be breaking bread Jello Pudding Pops with me. But even I can't ignore what people look like. It would be nuts to even try. We think it's neat when we see different-colored birds at the zoo. So there's no reason pretend we don't each have some kind of unique look too. A more credible theory might be that we're approaching a "post-racist" America, in which we can acknowledge other people's ethnic physical characteristics but not judge their character by their skin color. That would be a more credible philosophy, but I have my doubts we're there yet, either.

News organizations everywhere should band together and make this the year we stop covering the likes of Tila Tequila in pages and on air once meant for useful information. Scratch that. I was dreaming. We're gonna have to cover her and her ilk as long as readers and viewers who shake righteously indignant fists at us in the morning continue to sneak back at night to get their gossip fill. Where information consumption is concerned, face it: You get what you want.

This should go without saying, but if the cast of Jersey Shore consisted of eight Puerto Rican kids who relished calling themselves a racial slur that rhymes with "hick," MTV would not have even considered airing the show.

Levi Johnston, former almost son-in-law to Sarah & Todd Palin and father of their only grandchild, exposed his junk for Playgirl magazine.

Playgirl magazine still exists.

In her new book, Going Rouge Rogue, Sarah Palin bit the hands that fed her. And relax, Palin fans. I'm neither bashing the GOP or hockey moms. You should know this already. But just in case, "Bit the hand" is just a figure of speech, not a comparison to a dog or any other mammal large enough to hold a hockey stick or wear lipstick. Anywho, setting aside your political leanings, you have to believe that any reining in done by McCain staffers during last fall's presidential election was done to help McCain - and therefore Palin - win the White House. To bash those staffers now over things like diet advice, wardrobe, Saturday Night Live, and media interviews is silly.

The first missing kid whose picture was posted on the side of a milk carton is still missing 30 years later. Not making fun. It's a tragedy. But have you ever taken even 10 seconds to look closely at one of those milk carton pics and then kept an eye out for the kid? Me either. And I used to drink a lot of milk.

In the "It was bound to happen" category: A young athlete with big potential did not drop out of college to turn professional. Nope, Jeremy Tyler broke a record. He dropped out of high school. That's right, Tyler, a 6'11" basketball phenom, quit San Diego High School after his junior year. You can't enter the National Basketball Association draft till you're 19. So the impatient Tyler stupidly signed a 1-year $140,000 (that's thousand, not million) contract with a pro team in Haifa, Israel, so he could polish his skills and raise his profile till he becomes eligible to play in the U.S. Here's the shocker: Tyler's Haifa experiment is going very badly A good crossover dribble is great. Tyler's suck-ups (parents, friends, etc.) should have told him reading is fundamental, 'cause at the rate he's going, he may never make it to the NBA.

The U.S. Army gave a bogus story...at first about the circumstances surrounding the murders committed at Fort Hood recently by Army Maj. Nidal Hasan - everything from who took him down, to whether he'd made any declarations involving his religion, to whether he was alive or not, following the shooting. Why?

Andre Agassi's early-to-mid 1990s power mullet was actually a pelt. I would have written about this sooner, like right after Agassi admitted it in his new book. But the shock was too great for me.

This one falls into the Hell-must-exist-for-people-like-this category: A woman in Texas faked breast cancer, so she could collect donations and use 'em to pay for breast implants. She got the implants.

Carrie Prejean has more sex tapes, eight total. So if the first that she admitted to was "the biggest mistake of (her) life," as she told Sean Hannity on his Fox News Channel show, then where on the sliding scale of mistakes do the other seven tapes fall? Lesson: It's OK to take a moral stance on something, even if your stance is unpopular. If you're really principled, then popularity shouldn't phase you. On the other hand, before you take "principled" stands that involve finger-wagging, news conferences, and making the talk show rounds, you'd better make sure you don't have any closet skeletons that will negate your self-righteousness in the eyes of the general public. That's not caving in to popularity. That's just good sense. BTW, those of you, my friends, who always scold me for allegedly picking on sexually "free" people, leave me alone on this one. I'm not picking on Prejean for loving herself. But you gotta admit it was kind of very stupid to do it on tape, know the tapes were out there, and still go on a media blitz portraying herself as the picture of the new, modern, young "Christian soldier."

This one from the Daily Mail in Britain: Universal Pictures, one of the film companies that frequently distributes to theaters worldwide movies so bad they might cause cancer, has been busted in the UK for deleting the images of African American actors Faison Love and Kali Hawk from promo posters for Couples Retreat. Asked to explain, Universal said it was innocently trying to "simplify" the poster for international audiences. Loosely translated, "simplify" in this context means "remove the scary black people so that our British audiences don't see the posters and get turned off to this film."

The Daily Beast has an article up right now discussing the number of advertisers who've fled Glenn Beck's Fox News Channel show recently and whether the departures hurt Beck or not, over the longterm. The hubbub was over Beck calling Pres. Obama "a racist" who "has a deep-seated hatred for white people," and then saying of the president less than two minutes later "I'm not saying he doesn't like white people."

Ruh?

But I digress. The headline above the story reads: "Beck Weathers Blows," as in Beck weathers the blows of protests and fleeing advertisers.

Clearly the Beast's headline writer hadn't heard of Beck Weathers. Seriously, Dr. Beck Weathers, who is actually a nice guy, made headlines in 1996 after he nearly died on a climb up Mt. Everest. He lost both hands and had his nose rebuilt Michael Jackson style. And now he's a well-respected motivational speaker.

So Beck Weathers does not blow. I won't pick on the Beast headline writer anymore. Truth is I'd have never known who Beck Weathers was if I hadn't written a story about another climber/motivational speaker a few months ago and came across Weathers while researching that story.